Esther Duflo

Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Esther Duflo is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). In her research, she seeks to understand the economic lives of the poor, with the aim to help design and evaluate social policies. She has worked on health, education, financial inclusion, environment and governance.

Professor Esther Duflo’s first degrees were in history and economics from Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris. She subsequently received a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1999.

Duflo has received numerous academic honors and prizes including the Infosys Prize (2014), the David N. Kershaw Award (2011), a John Bates Clark Medal (2010), and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship (2009). With Abhijit Banerjee, she wrote Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, which won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2011 and has been translated into 17 languages.

Duflo is a member of the President’s Global Development Council and she is a Founding Editor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions to IPA are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. IPA’s tax identification number is 06-1660068.